How about if the author could specify a message that would appear if the user was about to print something with backgrounds suppressed? It would only appear if the author provided the text content. The UA would provide a small preamble ("you are about to print with backgrounds suppressed"), and choices for continue or not and for whether it should be a permanent setting change or not. The author would write something like this:
@warning-no-background: "If you continue, your printout will not show text highlighting."
Brad Kemper
On Feb 22, 2011, at 9:17 AM, Ian Fette (